Void Guardian 2.10

Approach 2.10

I’ve never experienced a moment that perfectly embodies the spirit of the record scratch sound effect. Until now. As I hear the words my world grinds to a halt. My heart freezes, the bottom falls out of my stomach and I go absolutely still. I can’t think. What? Why? How?

“What are you talking about?” is all I manage to get out, in a strangled voice I’m positive doesn’t do anything for my credibility.

He only seems to realize what he’s revealed, or maybe what he only guessed after the fact. His eyes widen, and hands rise up slightly, open. “Oh fuck. That came out horribly. It's just, I mean--” his open palms twitch toward each other, before moving back. “I only figured it out because… the same exact thing happened to me. I'm sorry,”

His fumbling reply doesn’t clarify anything for me. A set of errant thoughts roll through my head - ‘Has he killed someone?’ and ‘we’re both transformed right now’ and ‘I am alone with him.’ Confusion and worry roil in my gut and I’m suddenly very aware of the weight of the glaive in my hand. My fist tightens on it, and my mind does as it’s wont to do and starts spinning off a series of horrible scenarios where all his kindness has been a setup.

He’s planning to kill me here where I can’t get away. He’s planning to rape me here. He’s planning to leave me trapped here and go tell the other girls. He’s planning to abandon me and the few people who care about me at all anymore will vanish. My breathing quickens and I just can’t. I can’t actually put a coherent question together. I can’t articulate my disordered thoughts while staring at his panicked face. I can’t… I can’t think. I fall back on an old standard. “What,” I say, my tone as flat as I can make it through my worry.

He shifts uncomfortably, repeatedly aborting movements. He wants to shift, to move, to do something but he’s trying to stay as still as possible. Finally, he just turns his head, looking off over my shoulder, unseeing.

“I… couple days ago, I was driving late at night, through the same area where we fought that monster tonight. And a girl darted out in front of my car. She didn’t… make it, and that’s when I met, um, ‘my’ Puchuu and… the rest is, well.” He waves with one hand down the length of his body, and looks down, dejected.

“Oh.” I stare into space over the top of his head, thunderstruck. That’s what he meant. ‘The exact same thing happened to me.’ Not hyperbole. Literally the same thing. The exact same thing. My glaive drops. I don’t hear it hit the floor. I take a couple steps over and sit heavily on the bed. That’s… that says a lot. I spend a long moment, just sitting, lost in my head and considering all that says, before finally forcing my gaze up to his face, unexpectedly meeting his eyes.

I take in that worried face and remember the moment we recognized each other’s loss in the car. It makes sense - he’s lost his old connections too. I can see how worried and tired he is - those blue-green eyes are quite expressive, even if the shade is as odd as my own golden amber. And a thought strikes me, rolling through my head and gathering steam like my fears of his deception. “Riley...” I manage to get out, voice softer and thicker than I’d like. “You didn’t used to have green eyes, did you?”

His face flashes surprise and pain, before settling into a broken grin that speaks of sadness and relief at the same time. It takes him a moment to speak but he gets out a quiet response. “No. Not even close.”

Silence reigns. We gaze at each other, unseeing. He speaks again, voice wavering just a bit. “Is that yours? The color, I mean.” His hand drifts to lay a finger under one eye, and then the other.

It’s him too. Not his body. Neither of us are ourselves, and he knows. He knows how it is. I don’t have control enough to hide my emotion when I respond, and when I do it’s nearly a whisper. “No. This isn’t me either.” I curl in on myself, hunching forward. How can I feel small even at my new size?

I’m still wrapped up in my own head when I absently note him sitting beside me. The mattress shifts and dips as he sidles up next to me. He puts an arm around my shoulder, almost tentatively at first, but with a firmer grip when I don’t flinch away. He half starts, mouth working and stopping before coming out with one of the nicest things I’ve heard since this all happened.

“I don’t know if what happened to us is rare or not. But if I have to be living this way, I’m glad I found you.”

I can feel tears start to well in my eyes as the silence drags, but when he speaks a second time, humor in his voice, I see my out.

“That’s not right. You found me, I guess.”

I give him a look, trying for a sarcastic smirk. I don’t think I manage it. My eyes are still brimming with tears and my smile is more pained than I’d like. My voice wavers, but I manage to put a slight edge on it. I lean on black humor, trying to hide behind it while I pull myself together. “Excuse me, I think that the monster is the one that put us in touch.”

His shoulders hitch briefly before a smile breaks across his face, his expressive eyes nearly glowing with mirth. “How--how gracious of it. Four stars on Better Business Bureau. Woulda been five but I don’t really appreciate the attempted murder.”

I don’t know how to respond to that, really. Snark should be met with snark, but I can’t muster up anything else right now. I’m suddenly acutely aware of his arm around me. I can’t deny I enjoy the touch. I haven’t been… I haven’t been held or hugged for a few days now. I’m not sure I should be giving him encouragement on that front though. I might as well come clean. If he already knows about the dead girl, this is small potatoes.

“That’s terrible,” I say with some humor. I elbow him in the ribs for his bad joke, falling back onto the bed and out from under his arm. The motion covers a quick mop of my eyes with my other hand as I turn away briefly.

I turn back and look at him, eyes a little drier. “I...” I hesitate, trying to phrase it right. “I’m a little jealous that you got to keep your gender though.”

He starts, hand going to rub the back of his head in a damn near stereotypical expression of ‘aww shucks’ embarrassment. “Well. As it were, I--” then he cuts off, whirling about to look at me with his mouth hanging open and eyebrows rammed way up. His shock is plainly written all over his face.

I smile sadly. I suppose it’s a bit of a kick in the nuts to realize the girl he’s spent so much time checking out and getting chummy with is actually a dude. Sort of. Was actually a dude. An unpleasant feeling of having the rug pulled out from under him.

He only takes a second before he starts yammering. “Wait. So you--you swapped, too? I mean--”

His words spill out in what I assume is the verbal backpedal and ass covering I’d expect, but then what he said registers and I bolt up, his shock mirrored on my own face. I don’t even stop to think, mouth immediately blurting out what’s on my mind. “You didn’t. You were a girl.”

“Yeah.” Now it’s his turn to be thunderstruck. He wears an expression of loss, but it slowly melts as his hands scrub across his face. His shoulders relax, and he even cracks a slightly sheepish smile as he meets my astounded gaze.

“I’m kind of--surprised if I didn’t raise red flags before now. God, I feel so conspicuous. It’s like--nothing’s quite right, things aren’t crazy off but they’re off enough that they throw me off and--and you know exactly what I’m talking about.” He breaks into a stressed out, tired laugh, and I instantly empathize. Like he says, I know exactly what he’s talking about.

I pull both my legs up to sit cross-legged on the bed, facing him. Wow. I… I completely didn’t expect that. Exactly the same down to the gender flip? But then ‘I didn’t expect that’ could be the tagline for everything in the last couple days. I lean forward a bit, putting my chin in my hands. “To be perfectly honest - you did give off a weird vibe. I thought you were gay a couple times, because you’d do something effeminate - like the way you hugged me. But then I also noticed you checking me out, so I wasn’t sure what to think.”

Apparently, that was just too blunt for him, because he coughs in surprise and a flaming blush streaks across his cheeks and ears. But his smile is one of honest joy instead of tired frustration like his laugh a moment ago. I guess I didn’t screw up too badly.

“Well, I guess your red flag was half-right. I bat for both teams--or, my old body did. Jury’s out on this one.” He pauses, probably trying to phrase things delicately before continuing. “I… will openly admit that you can be a bit… distracting at times. Sorry if I made it weird. I’d blame it on my unwelcome return to teenage hormones but that’s probably a cop-out.”

Huh. Not what I expected. I cock my head a bit while I think on what he said. “I guess that makes sense. I am-” I pull up short. How do I describe this? I am straight? I don’t know. That doesn’t sound right coming from a girl to a boy. I was straight? Did this body flip that, or am I still ‘straight’ only appropriate to my body and attracted to men now?

I muse on this probably longer than I should, because he breaks in before I can sort myself out. “Please don’t feel the need to disclose anything back to me. I’m just sort of--talking now. I guess.”

Riley’s words drag me out of my thoughts. “Oh. Uh, I’m just not sure how to word it.” I gesture with my hands as I continue. “Saying ‘I was straight’ implies I’m not now. But if I ‘am straight’ does that mean I like girls still or like guys now, because I’m a girl now? Is straight even the right word? You see what I’m saying?”

His brows furrow. “Language is the worst. And this concept is a migraine, yeah.”

He moves, facing me more fully on the bed. With my navel-gazing done with, I’m able to see his eyes flick down below my face. Oh, right. ‘Return to teenage hormones,’ he said. My outfit might make a serious discussion hard.

Right after thinking it, I internally facepalm, and feel my face heat. I try not to think about the double entendre I just made in my head, and fix an untransformed self in my mind. With a brief push, my costume vanishes in a spray of violet sparkles, replaced by my tank/skirt combo from earlier. That’s… probably not much better. I concentrate a bit on a particular outfit, and it changes between blinks to a set of lavender pyjamas.

That done, I refocus on him, to see him holding back a smile. I clear my throat to grab his attention and fix his gaze with my own, bringing up another issue. “Ah, I assume by the phrasing of ‘return to teen hormones’ we’re both a fair bit older than we look.”

“Right. I mean, I wasn’t middle-aged or anything like that--not that that’s a bad thing. But I definitely felt bizarre being at that high school.” He backpedals furiously before going on to elucidate. “Twenty-six.”

I can’t help but smile to myself. A response like that sounded like he was trying to avoid offending me if I happened to be middle-aged. “I know the feeling, though I’ve been in schools since I graduated myself, so it wasn’t quite as odd for me. I’m twenty-nine.”

A smile spreads across his face. He’s clearly realized something-

“Hey, I did think you were making some references that were pretty unusual for a teenager. Makes sense.” He looks down, but in thought this time, instead of trying to avoid staring at me or out of shame.

I snort, but smile openly this time, hoping he’ll look up. “Hey you first. I was playing off of you with that Final Fantasy stuff. You said limit breaks before I said Omnislash.”

“Ha! You’re right,” he concedes, before raising his head and returning my smile. This is nice. Just… friendly banter. No secrets or fear. This sort of peace had been entirely absent the last couple days, and I had been pretty sure it wasn’t ever going to be part of my life again. And yet, here it is.

We spend an awkwardly long time basking in the feeling of companionship before Riley seems to realize how long the silence has gone on and tries to fill it. “Oh, so… um, sleeping situations. I’m honestly good with the chair and maybe leaning forward onto the bed… I mean, I fall asleep in airplanes like that all the time, on those little tray tables. And through maybe a few math classes. So feel free to spread out.”

I almost want to take it. I got a little banged up in that fight and the soft bed sang a siren song. I didn't though. Instead I rolled my legs off the edge of the bed and gave Riley a questioning look.

“Shouldn't I be offering the bed to you? I don't have too much trouble sleeping sitting up either, and I had the bed last night.”

“Yeah, but… you’re so tall. Isn’t leaning over like that sort of killer on the middle and lower back? Or so some of my tall friends have told me. I can take it tomorrow if you like? To be honest I’m still pretty wide awake so I don’t even know if I’d make good use of it tonight.”

I gave him a dismissive wave. “Tomorrow we’re going shopping, so we’ll get an air mattress or something. I mean if you’re positive you want to stay up, you can. But I was up real early this morning and I can attest that there's not much to do in here.”

One of my unpleasant thoughts from just a few minutes ago returns, and I grimace at it. “Well, I mean unless you can leave, which you can. But if you leave and don't come back, I'm stuck here. So please don't.”

He goes a little pale at that, clearly not having realized the implications of the way we got to his apartment. “Yikes… that’s scary. I won’t go anywhere.” He spends some time looking around the barren room before continuing. “It would be great to have a book at some point… maybe I can find a bargain bin of old paperbacks when we’re out tomorrow.”

“You sure you don't want the bed?” I'm not going to insist, but I'll give him… her… I'll give Riley an out.

“Positive,” he states with some force. Then continues in a less confident tone. “Will it bug you though if I run the shower? It’s been… a bit since I’ve had one.”

“Oh. No, I don’t think it’d bother me at all. Feel free? I don’t think I noticed the hot water running out at all when I was in there this morning, so I guess either the tank is huge or it’s just magic.”

“Frickin’ score if so,” he mutters, turning away and disappearing into the bathroom.

The door shuts behind him, and I turn to the bed. I still feel a bit bad for taking his bed a second night in a row. I toss the blankets over and slip under the covers. Well. For a given value of slip. I don’t catch on anything, but I feel huge. I didn’t notice it last time because I was curled up, but I can’t even fit on this tiny twin mattress. My heels hang off the edge of the bed. The blankets can’t quite give me full coverage. Jesus. I feel like I’m sleeping in a kid’s bed. Or a hobbit’s.

The door reopens and Riley’s pokes his head out, smiling and clearly happy. “G’night, I guess, if you go to bed before I’m done.”

Even with the mild discomfort of the bed I can’t help but reflect that back in a wide smile of my own, partly sitting up to give him a wave. “G’night.” I lie back down and try to get comfortable. I hear the sound of the water change in the bathroom as the shower gains an occupant. It’s interesting. This isn’t nearly as bad as I had feared. Maybe tomorrow I could start... picking up the pieces of my old life? Adjusting to the new normal? My mind flits about, half formed plans of what to do tomorrow keeping me awake.

The sound of the water shifts again, and I’m reminded how I spent my first shower here, and what Riley was probably doing. I feel my face heat and I shake my head. Not what I wanted to be thinking about right now. I roll over, curling my knees up to fit onto the bed. Trying hard to focus on the glittering lights outside the window, and not on what my new roommate was very likely doing just a few feet away, I let myself slowly drift off.